Received Tues, February 19, 2013

Zachary has talked about a book, The Power of Everyday Missionaries, a couple of times. I started off my letter to him by asking him more about that book. He talks about that book. Very interesting!

Also, our family was in Idaho over the long weekend. Drove up on Saturday afternoon and drove back home on Tuesday. Went sledding; it was fun. We waited and looked from Zak's e-mail on Monday, but it never came because the libraries were closed that day; so the letter came on Tuesday.

It is filled with fun and interesting information!  Also, Zak wrote his letter, sent it, then realized he had MORE time, so he wrote and sent another letter. Yea! So, we've got a two-parter. Enjoy!

this is late because yesterday the libraries were closed.

QUESTIONS:

How did you get a copy of the book? PofEDM

I call it PEM (pronounced phonetically). So, Clayton Christensen (the author) is the 1st counselor to President Packard. I've heard him speak one time and thought it was really good. I've heard he'll be there in our zone conference which is this thursday (I think everyone in our mission presidency is really great). When we received the book our zone leaders said he wrote it at request of someone in the quorum of the 12 (I think Elder Ballard) and I know they had to read/approve of it before it was published (the only change they made was to take out the Sister Fulcher story. I don't 100% get why they did. It has to do something about how the story was to much like "training" or something). A copy of the book was given to every missionary in our mission, and we were asked to read/study it. I know we'll talk a lot about it this thursday. We talk about it/the ideas in it in basically all our dinner appointments/whenever we're in members homes. I am a huge fan of the book; I think it's pretty amazing he's able to set goals for when he'll find someone for the missionaries to teach and he always hits his goal (the chapter on goals is towards the end).

I've had a few members decide they'll order a copy too

Talk about you being the designated driver!! Why? Who picks?

ultimately it's president Packard who picks, because its part of transfers. I think 90% of the time it's just whoever has been out longer, but not for us. 

Are you using your GPS?

yes! it is working well.

Did you do laundry more or less than once a week in your last area where you could do laundry on a whim?

I mostly tried to do it on pday, but often i would forget and I'd just end up doing it when I realized I didn't have anything clean for the next day, so on average I think less than once a week.

Anymore snow stories?

not really. It's been a little warmer recently (except that its also really windy here often which is what makes it feel freezing). It's raining today. We also saw what looked like a dump truck today full of snow carrying it off somewhere where it won't be in the way

Staying warm?

yea.

How is your new area?

pretty bueno. I actually like the ward a lot. theres lots of really nice members and people willing to do missionary work and help us out and come with us to lessons and things. We have some progressing investigators, especially part member families. Church was good on sunday. The organist didn't see the 2nd page of the opening hymn so he kept messing up badly and it was really funny. We had a less active who came for the first time in forever and she thought it was funny too. Elder Holt and Elder Bloomfield (his last companion, who was Cosmo at BYU!) had things going pretty good here. I think some members have a few friends they're talking to who will become golden investigators in the coming months.

Different accent from the people?

I think there's less of an accent here. Lots more yankee fans here though. It's about a 50/50 split. I think it's weird. People aren't supposed to like the yankees.

Did you get a valentine from us in the mail?

I haven't gotten anything yet.

At Grandma’s we are watching deer and turkeys…they like to eat the bird feed. Makes grandma mad.

Utchdorf would tell them "Stop It!"

remember how with the big blizzard we were hunkered down with our whole district? well one of the other missionaries there was sick. since then 4 of the other 5 of us have all gotten sick too. I was the lucky healthy one though, so ha! Elder Holt got it pretty badly though, so we didn't get to do much actual work for a few days. I've had a weird start to my time here in CT. I'm not sure he's 100% better yet either.

I talked about how it is really nature'y here right? with lots of trees and wildlife? this week while we were driving to a members home, in a sparsely populated area we saw a bobcat run across the road! just like it was a regular animal to randomly see. It was the daylight and everything. Elder Holt said it was not the first time he's seen that. Besides the health issues it was a pretty good week. We did have a few people cancel on us and then not come to church when they were supposed to. there's always next week.

Like I said church was good. We had ward council which I think went pretty well. There is another ward that meets in the same building as us that has elders who are in our district so we had them teach our missionary prep class the priests come to in the morning (because we were in ward council). Elder Holt and I asked the bishop if we could speak at church sometime soon and I think he will.

Later today we have a dinner at a home with a recently reactivated mom that has a 10 year old daughter with a baptismal date. After that we have a lesson with a young couple/family that is a less active guy and an investigator with a baptismal date in march. I'm not sure she's aware they need to get married before that though (they have 2 kids) so it we'll see how that all shakes out.

I feel like there should be more, but nothing is coming to mind. well thank you very much and have a safe trip home!

**Now, this is letter #2:

I remembered another interesting thing I was going to mention (also Elder Holt isn't done yet). So before one of our dinner appointments this week Elder Holt mentioned the father is Freemason. There were also like 2 masons in my last area, which I always found interesting, especially because I didn't think people really still did that/I don't really know anything about them except that they helped hide the National Treasure from Nicholas Cage. During the appointment this week I noticed he had a big mason ring on, so I asked him about it and we had a really interesting conversation. He made it seem not near as strange/weird as I thought it would be (btw he was a bishop when he became a mason). they are probably in their late 30's and they have 3 funny kids. He mostly likes learning about different symbols and what they mean and likes the fact that masonry has been the same for so long, so he's doing/hearing the same thing Masons have for centuries (people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin).

Also while we were eating, when we started asking about missionary work the wife excitedly told us about how they often bring one of there daughters friends to church with them AND their neighbors have expressed interest, so it was a great visit all around.

I think we've gotten valentines from 3 or 4 different kids while in their homes. I think 2 of them also had candy. Which reminds me, our refrigerator here has a big box full reeses candy bars. Things have changed since I was on no sugar with Elder Beck.

Another interesting thing I noticed a bit ago but never mentioned is that on lds.org if you press the "resources" in the top right you can then press "sharing the gospel" it it'll show you how to help do kind missionary things online. It even mentions blogging. Maybe mom will find that interesting. PEM also has a section on using blogs/online things and I know there are a few missionaries in this mission President Packard has working as "digital missionaries". I'm not 100% sure what they're doing, but they are regular healthy, hard working missionaries.

I really like our church websites a lot. They have lots of great bible/inspirational videos and things, I've used one in a lesson before (in my last area we taught it in the church in the family history center where we had computers) and it went really well. As missionaries we're allowed to spend an hour every week looking at the church sites for that reason, we did sometimes in southcoast, we never have here though.

ok that's about everything.

I had been distracted on http://missionaryleaders.org (not an officialy church website, but President Haight, president packards 2nd counselor, has told me to go there before) reading about how to improve.

I really like it a lot. I really appreciate my chance to be here in New England trying to help spread something I love. I'm glad I can feel the spirit even when I'm at a public library and hope I can help others feel the same in their homes so they can have the direction and relationship with their heavenly father they need and deserve.

I love you all and hope you have a great week